


people like you, people like me

by ilgaksu



Series: ceasefire [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Exes, Getting Back Together, Hunk is a good friend, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Klance are exes before S1 Begins, Korean Keith (Voltron), M/M, Texan Keith (Voltron), They're about 18-19 in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 22:08:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7731586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lance takes the seat directly opposite Keith without asking, and only grins wider in response in Keith’s death glare. He leans over with his own spoon and grabs part of the faintly toxic-looking rehydrated strawberry from Keith’s plate. Keith tries to slap his hand away, although it doesn’t work. </p><p>Not much works on Lance. It’s the third day, and Keith’s a fast learner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	people like you, people like me

“You know Lance, right? From the Garrison?”

Without even glancing over, Keith knows Lance’s smirk says _Biblically._ Keith looks to where he’s stood. His hair’s been cut. His jacket still has the Cuban flag sewn crookedly across the bicep, and there’s a healing split on his lower lip and he’s grown and -

Under the smirk, he’s looking at Keith with eyes too still for his face.

Keith thinks: his eyes were like that the first time we snuck out after curfew. They were like that when I first put my hand to his chest and felt the hitch there, and they were like that when he was being chewed out in the early drills. Lance, breath caught and eyes still, hyperaware and elsewhere at once. _Are you with me,_ Keith used to ask. _Always,_ Lance used to reply.  

Lance, slipping back to Cuba in his mind, to the weight of the sun he used to talk about. Lance going home, getting out, getting off -

“No,” Keith lies. “I don’t remember him.”  

Hunk looks uncomfortable. Keith’s never met him; he was newly enrolled in the days after Keith jumped ship, but he looks uncomfortable all the same. Keith’s never met him, but he still won’t meet his eyes.

Keith doesn’t look to his right. After all, Shiro lost an arm and a year and a crew. After all, Lance keeps his mouth shut. They’ve all changed.

Call it growing pains, Keith thinks.

*

“Hey, dude,” says a final-year cadet manning the help desk on the third day, glancing at Keith’s signature as he passes some paperwork over. “Cool name. Like, super unusual. I know this one girl, right, from Seoul -”

“I’m from Texas,” Keith replies, and lets his sneer roll out on the accent.

Caught on the upswing of it, swelling like a fat lip, the other cadet stammers. Keith walks past him to the mess hall.  

 _Drop your GED, Keith,_ the poster in the convenience store window had said. _You’re better than this town, Keith. We want you, Keith._

It’s the last part he’d fallen for. Wards of the state speak a secret language, Keith’s learnt, and he guesses they’re all weak to the same hooks. At least he’s self aware.

Looking around the mess hall at the reams of milling teenagers, he ignores the faint echo of the last therapist: _what is it you want, Keith?_

 _Not to be here right now,_ he’d said. He grips his tray and heads towards an empty table by the exit. He wonders idly how long it’d take them to find him if he went AWOL. If paramilitary police are faster than their small-town counterparts.

“Dude,” he hears, “Are you seriously drinking _milk_?”

It takes him a beat to realise he’s being addressed.

“It’s good for my bones,” he says dryly, without looking up.

“No I mean, aren’t you scared it’s gonna undermine the whole thing you’ve got going? ‘Cause, you know. It is.”

“I don’t have a thing,” he says, and looks up. “Jesus, Sanchez, if you want to wreck shit, go back to the simulator and leave my break hour alone. I don’t loom over you and -”

“Sure you do,” Lance says, “And sure you do. Or you would, if you’d only grow. And also: can you not.”  

Lance takes the seat directly opposite Keith without asking, and only grins wider in response in Keith’s death glare. He leans over with his own spoon and grabs part of the faintly toxic-looking rehydrated strawberry from Keith’s plate. Keith tries to slap his hand away, although it doesn’t work.

Not much works on Lance. It’s the third day, and Keith’s a fast learner.

“Can I not what?” Keith seethes.

“Bring Jesus into this,” Lance says, his mouth full of Keith’s dessert and heading in again with the spoon. This time, Keith gets to it first and crams his mouth with his own food. It’s a protective measure, and for all Lance is quick on the uptake, Keith’s quicker.

“Get your own,” he snaps.

“Dude,” Lance whines, looking wounded, “What happened to _mi casa su casa_?”

“About that,” Keith replies, “Don’t you dare sleep in my bunk again. I don’t give a shit how drunk you are, you climb up to your own goddamn bed. I said,” he repeats, seeing Lance open his mouth, “I don’t give a _shit,_ Lance. You make your bed, you lie in it, and you make it yours and not mine.”  

“Are you always like this?” Lance sighs. He tilts his head and seems to be honestly inspecting Keith like he’s trying to decrypt something. For a second, Keith shivers with it, with the knife-edge fear of ever being known, but then he remembers it’s Lance Sanchez, with the lowest entrance scores going. Lance doesn’t know anything.

“No,” Keith says, licking his spoon and slamming it down against his tray before getting up. With Lance sat hunched over his own tray, all legs and weird coltish grace, Keith does get to loom. He allows himself a moment to enjoy it.

“No?”

Keith says: “I’m usually worse.”

*

It doesn’t get awkward until the desert, until Keith has them all in his house, looking at his web of thread and photographs, their eyes carrying such weight and for so long he feels dissected by it. It doesn’t get awkward until Keith has Lance in his house, looking at his house, looking at him. Lance keeps his hands in his pockets and keeps away from Keith and they both pretend very hard that this is the most naked Lance has ever seen him.

 _I don’t remember him._ Keith can see the echo of it in the back of Lance’s eyes, the faint hurt ricochet of it. He doesn’t know why he did that, only that Lance still stands so easy and still looks so good, only that he’s still as garrulous and infuriating, only that he’s still okay when Keith feels ground down to the bone, restless as always, his eyes bruises from too many nights scouring the horizon.

Keith’s thrown under the bus all over again. His skin itches. It was easier when there was a whole desert between them.

When they find the first lion, when it calls to Lance and only to him like a red thread around his ribs, dragging him through the forcefield and into the future - when they find Lance’s lion, what Keith will remember is Lance’s sideways smile, the vicious curl of it at odds with his eyes.

 _Something chose me,_ the gleam of his teeth seems to say. _Something chose me, and not you._

_I don’t remember him._

Not for the first time, Keith wishes he was better, not worse.

*

Lance kisses him the fourth time they sneak off base. He laughs into Keith’s mouth, and Keith breathes it in, and he feels the light of it trickle into his bones. They kiss until their lungs ache like the last gasp of a dying star.

“What are we doing,” Keith asks.

“Close your eyes and trust me,” Lance says.

Above them, the sky stretches out forever. Lance’s eyes are dark and still. He blinks slowly and Keith watches the sweep of his eyelashes.

“Go on,” Lance whispers. “Or are you too chicken?”

He means: _are you scared?_ His face is far too knowing for a boy who isn’t supposed to know anything at all. His hand trembles where it’s caught at Keith’s throat.

“Aren’t you?” Keith replies, swallows hard, and closes his eyes.

*

 _Cargo pilot,_ Keith calls him, and Lance’s face drops, the echoes in his eyes ringing ever louder, and Keith feels the drop in his own gut. Irritably, he tries to push the feeling aside, but it persists. Lance always persists, and they’ve always been far, far too good at needling each other. They’ve always known how to get under the skin. They’ve always been able to draw blood.

Shiro looks at Keith, eyebrows drawn together, mouth twisted in disappointment. Keith never told him about Lance; Keith didn’t want to have to backtrack later. Keith can almost hear the old Shiro, finding Keith smoking on the Garrison’s various roofs. _You’re better than this, Keith._ That’s Shiro’s thing. He always sees people for what they could be, like an overlay on their actual selves; it’s not blindness, it’s a double-sight.

Keith’s chest flares a little with shame, but then it’s eaten up by a greater wave of defiance. Lance shoulders past him and Keith stands his ground.

_You’re better than this, Keith._

And Keith thinks: _I’m not I’m not I’m not -_

*

“You bit me,” Lance says, half-offended and only half, fingertips grazing his own throat, the juncture where it slips into shoulder and Keith never thought of before this as anything other than basic anatomy. Lance is half-offended and only half; his laughter is present in his shoulders before anywhere else and Keith can feel it readying itself. His grin, reflected back to Keith in the mirror, is blinding.

Something in Keith’s chest sings. Call and response. Affinity.

“Whatever,” he replies. “It’s too early for this shit.”

It’s too early for any of it. He flees to the roof, blinking his eyes against the light. Lance lopes up ten minutes later, drinking shitty cold-brew coffee and disallowing Keith his emotional crisis. They’ve always been too good at getting each other.

The opposite of love is apathy. This, Keith knows, is not apathy.

*

The first time they form Voltron, their strength is in their fear; of dying, of ceasing to exist, of never making it back home -

And that isn’t Keith’s thought, that’s never Keith’s thought, Keith has no home outside of the four walls in the desert; covered in photographs and red thread like his own nervous system externalised, flayed open, trembling in the dusty air.

He realises it must be Lance’s, Lance’s thought, Lance slipping away in his mind and making it an anchoring point instead of an escape. It nearly throws Keith out of alignment, the weight of the love a burden impossible for just one boy to shoulder.

They are not just one boy. They carry each other, and the day is theirs, and Keith hears Lance whooping on the comms. He thinks of riding a motorbike through the flat-baked dryland, them both screaming out, and Keith has always known that noise was in him, but he didn’t know Lance could sound so angry and triumphant and awful all at once. _I don’t remember him._

Keith doesn’t want this boy back in his head, but saying that is acting like he was invited. Saying that is acting like he ever left. Keith doesn’t want this boy back in his head.

They don’t form Voltron again. Keith pretends he doesn’t know why they’re struggling. Lance side-eyes him and stays quiet. Shiro side-eyes him and doesn’t. Pidge throws a tantrum over the silver helmets and saves Keith the trouble.

“What’s going on with you two,” Shiro asks, later on that evening, after they finally fall back into place. Keith was hoping if they managed it, Shiro wouldn’t ask him, but it’s Shiro. He tries not to phrase it like a demand, but on Earth Shiro outranks Keith, a cadet that never got into his colours, and Keith snaps into parade rest without even registering it. Shiro notices it, and his mouth curls, a little unhappy.

“At ease,” Shiro says, very quietly. Keith relaxes. Both of them hate it.

“I’m not,” Keith says, and Shiro says, “I know,” and Keith works his jaw and finally manages, “We’re trying. Isn’t that enough?”

“No,” says Shiro. “You don’t know the Galra like I do. We have to be stable. We can’t fall apart. We can’t afford to.”

“Are you convincing me or yourself,” Keith says, and Shiro winces.

*

They fall apart like this, like a fairy story, like a myth, like a story so old it's nothing at all: a man goes to Kerberos and never comes back.  
  
In the theory of catalysts, death is such a common and avid quickener. It's constant. It's cliche. It hits Keith like a stomach wound; slow and insidious until suddenly it's all at once, acid in his throat, acid in his mouth. The coppery taste in his teeth his own blood all along.

Shiro didn't know about Lance, but Lance knew about Shiro. Who didn't know about Shiro, the darling of the graduates, with his photo-ready smile and syrup-dark eyes?

Let's be honest here: Lance knew about Shiro because he had a crush on Shiro. Keith couldn't blame him. It'd be hypocritical. They'd have to blame each other, and whilst Lance was the orchestrator of some truly dumb shit, this wasn't. Dumb, that is. It just made sense.

So Lance knew about Shiro, knew about Shiro tutoring Keith in the odd free hours they shared. Shiro had lived in Naju City for four years during middle school. It was weird that a Japanese officer was teaching Keith the language Texas State's foster system had left a second-gen kid cut off from. Keith knew 20th century history, you know? It was weird, but he wanted Korean too much to cut his nose off to spite his face. He didn't have friends and Shiro was a good teacher. Keith could stand fucking up around him.

Keith, who has been labelled a disruptive screwup by at least six teachers in not so many and exactly so many words, actually wanted Shiro's approval.

Lance - whose low scores on entrance turned out to be more to do with Lance struggling with technical jargon in English - was visibly jealous.  
  
"One day, you'll be better than me," Shiro had told Keith very seriously.  
  
"One day," Keith had fired back, gleamingly arrogant and buoyed by newly ranking first in the Garrison scores - first, and the first time ever for Keith. "One day, you'll be taking orders from me."

"Show, don't tell."

"Oh, I'll show you."

A man goes to Kerberos, and never comes back. They hold a memorial for him. There's a photograph, and flowers, and a gun salute, an honour guard and finding out that Shiro had been raised Buddhist by his aunt.  
  
Keith, an atheist purely to be contrary back home, glares so hard at the chrysanthemums they ought to burst into flame.

"He's not dead," he insists to Lance later, drunk off shitty tequila and leaning heavily against Lance's side. There's a worm in the bottle, supposed to show how strong it is. Keith pulls a face at it. "He's not dead, Lance."

"I'm sorry," Lance says, and it's so sincere it pisses Keith off. They'd both been part of the honour guard, Keith clenching his jaw so hard it hurt and Lance uncharacteristically solemn.

"Shiro wouldn't die out there."

"Nobody means to die anywhere, Keith. Sometimes it just happens."

"I hate him," Keith snarls suddenly, hunching over. "I hate him for making me stand through that like he's - like he's actually -"

He gulps in a breath, every nerve scraped raw.  
  
"Sometimes you've got to let things go, Keith," Lance replies.

He looks much older in his dress uniform. Keith has a sudden, searing image of Lance, dead, on an alien planet with no sun. The image burns into the insides of his eyelids.

He's never been to a Catholic funeral.

"Fuck this," he snaps, and stomps off the roof.

*

Everything seems very distant after Shiro does not die, like Keith’s breathing underwater. This has happened before. It was usually his cue to go see another therapist. This time, he lets the riptide have him. He lets it pull him under, and he keeps one eye on the prize.

Shiro isn’t dead, and he fact he isn’t dead is just evidence of what Keith has always on some level known. The Garrison isn’t worth shit. The Garrison cannot be trusted. Keith has always known. It’s a paramilitary organisation based out of Arizona, based out of the USA. Keith knows 20th century history.

He can’t explain how sure he is something’s up, except it’s unyielding and taut and drives him out to roam endlessly in the desert for hours and for nights, skipping roll calls, skipping classes.

He starts moving his stuff out to that one shack in the desert he’d found with Lance. He remembers kissing him in the dust. He scrubs the floor until it’s gone, until it gleams, and avoids Lance’s eyes, hurt and wary, when he passes him on the way out of their room. He steals equipment, and he gets caught stealing the last of it.

He’s packing up what’s left of his things when Lance bursts into the room, panting and out of breath.

“What the fuck, Keith,” Lance snaps, body drawn lean and taut. He’s losing the last scraps of baby fat from when they first met. Lance, older. His eyes drop to where Keith’s dress uniform lies folded and discarded on the bed.

“Keep it,” Keith says, “We’re nearly the same height. It’s good to have a spare.”

“What the fuck, Keith,” Lance repeats, harshly. “You’re not coming back?”

“No.”

“So that’s it, then,” Lance says. He sounds angry. Keith won’t look at him, so he tells himself he can’t be sure.

“Yeah. What’s it to you?”

He looks up. He can’t help it. Lance’s mouth drops open.

“What’s it to -”

His face hardens and twists. Lance, older. Lance, older and alone, dying on an alien planet. A man goes to Kerberos and never comes back. It’s a fairy story, right up until it’s not.

“Right,” Lance says. His voice is low as a wound. “My bad. I forgot what you were like. I forgot this is how you do things.”

“What are you -”

“You run away when it gets hard, because you think you get a free pass out of the bad shit,” Lance says. The words cut something open in Keith’s chest. Lance is so sure of what he’s saying that Keith almost wants to go check his own reflection, just in case. Is this how Lance sees him?

“You don’t know fuck about bad shit,” Keith says dully, and swings his duffel bag up onto his shoulder.

“A lot easier not to lose people if you don’t keep them in the first place, right?” Lance taunts, except he doesn’t sound like he thinks it’s a taunt. He sounds sad, and certain, and Keith opens the door. “Wait - shit - come back, I don’t mean it. Come back. Keith!”

Lance sounds panicked. Keith is trying not to look at him, and he’s never heard Lance panic before, but he’s pretty sure it’s panicked.

“Yes, you do,” Keith says, because it’s true.

“Okay. Yeah. I do.”

Keith keeps his eyes on the door. Lance has a family, and friends, and Lance will do just fine.

“You’re gonna be a good pilot,” Keith tells him.

“Don’t go,” Lance says, “If you go, then - then what - what even was this, Keith? It’s not like we’re strangers. If you go, it makes us strangers, Keith.”

“Sometimes, you’ve got to let things go,” Keith replies, a deliberate echo, and walks out of the door.

*

After their next fight against the Galra, Lance’s eyes are shining like Christmas. It’s infectious, and Keith keeps getting caught up on everything. When Lance raises his hand for a high-five, the curl of his mouth a cliff edge, Keith runs headlong towards it, grabs at his arm and pulls Lance towards him. For all Lance’s added height, artificial gravity and momentum are both on Keith’s side. Lance has to throw out a hand against the wall so as not to crash into him.

“Hey,” Keith says, “See, I told you. You’re a _great_ pilot. I told you you would be.”

“Wait, what,” Lance says, and then, “Shut up!”  

Keith kisses Lance and he goes for broke. Lance’s mouth slides against Keith’s and catches, high and sweet with Chapstick. It’s alien and familiar. Keith’s chest aches, and he turns them and presses Lance against the wall like he can smother the pang in his chest that rings too close to old times. _Are you with me? Always._ Lance lets Keith lick into his mouth for a solid three minutes, his hands going white-knuckled at Keith’s hips. Lance’s voice is high and wrecked already when Keith pulls away to mouth at his neck, and he says, “This is a really bad idea, Keith.”  

Keith bites down. Lance throws his head back and cracks his skull against the wall, a dull throb of sound. He winces, and Keith shoves a hand into his hair, rubs at Lance’s scalp clumsily, runs a thumb along Lance’s bottom lip. Lance opens his mouth again.

“No,” Keith says, and moves back to his mouth. That’s when they hear the clatter of something being dropped, and break apart to see Pidge and Allura both gaping at them, with Hunk bringing up the helm. It’s a whole studio audience, and Keith tells himself he’s not remotely intimidated by the hard, protective glare Hunk is sending his way.

“Oh!” Allura says, coughing. “I see. Well. I should be –“and immediately rounds the corner again. Pidge, frozen with their laptop clutched in their hands, backs up slowly, one step after another, without looking away, until they finally disappear from sight. Both of these are excruciating enough, but Hunk doesn’t move.

“Lance,” he says, looking past Keith to him with a frown. Lance shakes his head.

“Don’t,” he says, and Keith looks between them. He still hasn’t dropped his hands from Lance’s shoulders. Maybe he should do that. After a moment, he does. After another moment, he slides his thigh out from between Lance’s. Lance bites his lip but says nothing.

“We’re kind of busy,” Keith says to Hunk, who rolls his eyes and slowly turns his back. Not before another bout of silent communication with Lance, and not before waiting for Lance to nod, and not before giving Keith another of those looks.

This is awkward. There’s a brief and painful silence, and then Lance says:

“I can’t do this.”

“What?” Keith says. He’s sure he’s heard wrong. Lance glances away for a moment, then steels his shoulders. Keith tracks the movement and knows it’s bad news before Lance ever speaks.

“Again,” Lance says quietly, “I’m not doing this again.”

“Okay,” Keith says, because what else can he say to that?

He watches Lance’s back all the way down the corridor, and tells himself that’s just what they’re doing now. Keeping an eye out for each other. Keeping an eye on each other. Keeping tabs.  

That’s just what they’re doing now.

*

“Hey! Roomie!” Keith looks up as some hyper kid ducks through the low doorway and drops his neon suitcase on the floor. “How’s it going? You claimed lowside on the bunk, I see, I see. I’m more of an up-top guy, so this is gonna work out great!”

His teeth are luminous. Keith eyes the suitcase, his own duffel bag stowed carefully under the bed, as his new roommate heaves it open. It’s close to bursting.

“Don’t travel light, do you?” he hears himself saying. He closes his eyes briefly. Sometimes, it’s like he isn’t even trying to make friends. Sometimes, he likes to pretend he likes the idea of trying. The boy, to Keith’s surprise, laughs.

“Honestly, dude, it’s the worst, my brother never lets it go.” He crosses the room and sticks out his hand. “Lance. Nice resting bitch face.”

Keith sighs, and takes his hand.

“Keith. You bring out that line on everyone, or am I a special occasion?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Lance says, and honest-to-God _winks._ By the time he unpacks the fifth bottle of Etude House product -

(“Dude, isn’t skincare, like, your culture?”

“Dude, is rum _yours_?”)

\- Keith physically cannot raise his eyebrows any more than he’s already trying to, so he heads out to the roof to smoke.

“Careful with your cancer sticks!” Lance calls after him down the corridor. “No judging though!”

Keith starts walking faster.

*

 _You think you get a free pass out of the bad shit_ : nothing’s free. Keith gets a shitty job serving at a diner out on the highway. It’s the sort of joint where Keith’s skin sticks to the plastic countertops when he drums his fingers against them, eyes on the clock, eyes on the desert.

He can’t shake the sense he’s living on borrowed time. When he rides home each night, the ice of the desert air whipping against the back of his neck, the whole world seems to be bated in the spaces between each breath. The whole world seems to be waiting for something.

Keith, impatient and starving, keeps his eyes on the clock and tells himself _it’s got to stop someday_. The job’s far enough out that the gas bill eats into his wages, but it’s far enough out that Keith kids himself no Garrison kid would be seen dead here. He kids himself right up until two months in, when Lance Sanchez walks through the door of the diner like some reunion scene out of a shitty made-for-TV movie.

Keith doesn’t give them the chance to make any kind of eye contact. He makes for the back, already unfastening his apron, and calls out to the line cook.

“I’m taking my break now.”

“Like hell you are,” his manager snaps back, swooping in. “We’ve just had ten of the Garrison’s lot take up the tables, and it’s Steph’s turn on break.”

Steph, a usually-shy girl with cornrows, tries not to look smug at skipping out on a party booking and fails.

“Put your goddamn apron back on, Keith,” his manager tells him, hands on hips.

Keith puts his goddamn apron back on. He very seriously debates walking out on his shift, but for all his star had been rising at the Garrison, outside of their perimeter he’s back to being some dropout with no GED. It’s easy to walk out, but walking back in someplace else?

He ducks out of the kitchen, and meets Lance’s eyes. Lance is halfway through laughing, his head thrown back and his arm thrown over some Polynesian kid’s shoulder. Said kid is built sturdy enough to snap Keith in half, not that Keith’s comparing. Lance looks tired, but he’s got his feet up on the other seat, like he’s always done, the cut of his shirt shows his collarbone, and Keith isn’t noticing, Keith is keeping his eyes on whatever’s coming for him over the horizon.

He glances to the clock again. He hasn’t got time for this.  

“Can I take your order,” Keith says, approaching, and Lance stops laughing. He drops his feet down from the seat. There’s enough people watching that Lance’s face only flickers with - whatever it is - for a second. Keith doesn’t bother looking at the rest of the group. He’s sure some of them probably recognise him, and he’s sure he’d recognise them back, but he’s trying not to think about the Garrison more than twice a day and so he lets his eyes skip over them.

He waits for someone to say something, but no one does. He lets his eyes skip back. He scans all the faces, and they’re all new recruits. Keith, his hair grown so long he’s pushed it out of his eyes with a dollar-store bandana, lets out a breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding.

“You don’t have any iced tea, do you,” Lance asks. His voice is the same as Keith had been expecting. What had Keith been expecting, exactly?

“Sure do,” Keith replies, and gets out his notepad. He notices Lance looking at his hands. He has to fight a sudden burst of hysterical laughter.   

Lance reels off an order Keith has heard him make a hundred times, with little to no alteration; Keith looks at the boy Lance has his arm around and remembers, and remembers too much, working on autopilot. He repeats their order back to them twice because he’s so caught up with remembering.

Lance is watching him with eyes too knowing for a boy who was never supposed to know anything at all.

“You want anything else today?” Keith asks, and Lance’s eyes flash.

“Nah,” he says, leaning forward to check out Keith’s nametag. “I think we’re good - Keith, is it?”

Keith makes it behind the kitchen counter in record time, his apron halfway off his head before he’s cleared the oven. He drops his notepad by Steph. He hears a burst of laughter from the front and winces.

“I’m taking my break now,” he says again, and this time, no one stops it.  

*

There’s a photo of Lance on his last leave from the Garrison, before they ended up getting lightyears ahead of themselves. It’s at Havana Pride, and he’s being carried bridal style by his older sister, all shaved head and the glint of her nose ring in the noonday sun, his sister-in-law sunburnt and grinning. Behind them, there’s graffiti glaring on the wall, framing their heads like some black-paint halo. _Siempre habrá más de nosotros._

“There will always be more of us,” Hunk translates. Keith jumps up from where he’s sat on Lance’s bed, and then tries to hide the photo and the fact he’s holding it red-eyed and alone in Lance’s room, and then he stammers and -

“Dude, sit down,” Hunk huffs good-naturedly and goes to sit beside him. It’s one of the first and only times Hunk and Keith have been alone in the same room, but it’s the first and only time Lance hasn’t gotten back up from a fight fists swinging so today’s been a lot of weird.

Keith’s eyes are stinging.

“I never got the hang of Spanish,” he admits, and Hunk smiles.

“I only know ‘cause he told me.”

There’s a brief silence.

“I’m not in a great place right now,” he says, “So, like, maybe Pidge is around?”

He knows as he says it how stupid that is. Hunk huffs under his breath again, not quite a laugh.

“No one’s in a great place right now,” Hunk says, “Are you gonna cry on me? Lance always does that, so it’s cool, I’m used to it. Shit, don’t tell him I told you -”

Hunk cuts off mid-sentence, suddenly looking gloomy. He lifts his hand to bite at a hangnail and Keith watches dully. Keith’s head is still fixated back on the way Lance’s knuckles had gone white against his bayard, Lance collapsing against the castle tile like every last one of Keith’s old Garrison nightmares and like every last one, he’s only there to watch.

“Lance does what?” he says, and tells himself he’s not jealous. He’s very careful to hold onto the present tense.

Hunk smiles, a little wobbly.

“The trick is get him onto vodka,” Hunk says. “He can’t hold it.”

“What,” Keith replies. “I knew it. I _knew_ there had to be something he couldn’t -”

“His limit’s about six shots of it,” Hunk tells him, grinning. “After that, he’s crying down your shirtfront and telling you his life story and also probably, like, stroking your hair or some shit? You came up a lot on vodka.”  

“Oh,” Keith says, and that explains it. He’s got a rough guess as to what was said. “I was kind of a -”

“Yeah,” Hunk interrupts, and they sit in silence again for a while. Then Hunk takes a deep breath and adds, “You’re not as bad as I expected, though.”

“Thanks.”

“Anytime.” Hunk stands up. “You wanna get changed out of your suit? We can head down to the healing pod afterwards to check up on him. I’ll wait for you.”

Keith glances at him, surprised.

“Oh, come on,” Hunk says. “It’s been four days. You haven’t been subtle. Decide what you’re gonna do about that before he wakes up, sure, but just - stop wandering around looking like - ”

“You were going to say ‘like someone’s died’, weren’t you,” Keith says, when Hunk stops suddenly and looks a bit ill.

“Well, I mean, he hasn’t, so.” Hunk grabs Keith’s arm without asking and yanks him up. It hurts, kinda, because Hunk’s stronger than he looks and Hunk looks -

“Keith? Buddy? Fellow paladin? Go take a goddamn shower.”

“Okay.”

“Please.”

“Okay.”

*

Keith is onto his third cigarette and counting when he hears someone round the back of the diner.

“Entrance is to the front and the left,” he says on automatic, not looking up. He toes at the gravel with his sneaker. “You can smoke outside there if you’re gonna.”

“I thought you’d quit,” Lance says, and Keith’s head snaps up. He’s stood a wary distance away, his hands in his jacket pockets, half in the light from the open kitchen door.

“Yeah, well,” Keith spits, “You thought wrong.”

Lance shrugs and doesn’t say anything more. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and still doesn’t say anything more.

“Look, if you wanna say something,” Keith says, losing what little thread of patience remains, “You’ve got two minutes, and then I’m back on shift so -”

“What are you even trying to do here, Keith,” Lance says, and Keith just looks at him, because he expected Lance to be sad. In the twenty seconds he’d had, he’d figured: tears, maybe? _Come back_?

Lance is the angriest Keith has ever seen him, and he’s counting that time they literally broke up. Or, well. Keith walked. He knows what he did. Lance is somehow more irritated now, though. His hands are balled into fists and he’s shaking, and Keith opens his mouth and says -

“Don’t pretend you don’t know me and then come out back to lecture me, Lance.”

“You’re better than this,” Lance starts again, like he can’t help himself, and maybe he can’t. Keith cuts him off with an outstretched hand, grinding the last of his cigarette under his sneaker sole. He’s angry too, he realises, almost absently, in this kind of bright and raging way he hasn’t been for months. He looks at the faint car lights coming from the front of the diner, the flash of them ricocheting in his chest. He hears someone shout Lance’s name. Lance’s head jerks towards the sound, but he turns back. Keith wavers.

“You’ve always been better than this, Keith.”

 _One day, you’ll be better than me._ Keith remembers, and it’s like being hit by a truck. The first crush of impact, the way he has to catch his breath around it. He’s the one who drove them off the road, but he thinks: Takashi Shirogane, pilot error, _sometimes you just have to -_

Maybe it’s Garrison boys who bring it out in him. Maybe it’s just Lance, but his heart is beating like a trapped hummingbird, and every last bit of acid that’s been curdling for the last three months is forced up at once.

“And I thought you were better, too. Guess we both got it wrong. That happens, sometimes, Lance. People get it wrong, alright? Go home. I have shit to do.”

He tries to not let Lance have the last word, but Lance isn’t one for breaking the  _habit of a fucking lifetime._

“You’re the one who left me, jackass!” he shouts, and kicks the kitchen door when Keith slams it in his face.

“You alright, Keith?” the line cook asks, frowning. “You look flushed, honey. Was someone bothering you?”

“It’s fine,” Keith tells her, “Not anymore,” and it should reassure her, but she just frowns more. She pats his shoulder three separate times before heading back to the fryer.

When Keith heads out front again, the Garrison lot have gone. He rides home through the dark and tells himself he isn’t looking for car lights.

He doesn’t see Lance again until the desert.

*

“You know,” Shiro says, “You could have always talked to me about this, right?”

Keith looks at Shiro over his shoulder, and then looks back to where Lance hangs suspended in the healing pod, the glass giving a strange greenish cast to his skin, like he’s floating underwater.

_I totally nearly drowned at Varadero one year. My sister had to swim out and save me. It was so embarrassing. Wait, what do you mean, you can’t swim, Keith? Don’t they have water in Texas?  How are you going into space when you can’t even swim? Dude. Dude. My dude. Come on. We’re gonna go swimming. Next leave. You and me. Alright? It’s a date._

“No,” Keith replies, “Shiro, we’re not having a talk right now.”

“Cool,” Shiro says firmly, and sits down beside him. “Then I’m going to talk at you, and you’re going to do that thing you were always slowest at, and listen to me when I talk at you.”

“You’re not my dad, Shiro,” Keith mutters, but doesn’t leave.

“I’m sorry you were on your own this last year,” Shiro says, and Keith very carefully keeps looking right on ahead. “That must have been -”

“It was a lot,” Keith says, aiming for light, and picks at the Velcro fastening on his glove.

“Didn’t they even,” Shiro struggles for the right words, “Provide some kind of counselling, or something, or anything -”

Keith looks at him.

“Right,” Shiro huffs, sounding angry.

“I was in the honour guard for your funeral,” Keith tells him, because suddenly he has to, and Shiro winces. “So was Lance. Did he tell you?”

“Yeah. He told me. He seemed pretty weirded out by it. He mostly mentioned how you’d been, though.”

“When was this?”

“When you weren’t around. He said you hadn’t given up on me, even when it got ugly.” Shiro swallows, his throat working. “Thanks. For not doing that.”

“Anytime,” Keith says, his chest tight and overwhelmed.

“Tell me you got drunk after.”

“So drunk,” Keith replies. “I wouldn’t give Lance the tequila bottle back.”

Shiro snorts, then gasps, a distinctly un-Shiro-like sound that has Keith whipping around to stare at him.

“My aunt was there, right? She’s going to kill me,” Shiro groans. Keith nods, and he groans again. “That’s it, Keith, I can’t ever tell her I’m alive. She’ll kill me, and then we’ll be back where we started. Scout’s honour, you can’t tell her.”

Keith raises his eyebrows.

“I thought she was a Buddhist nun?”

“No, dude, you don’t get it -”

“Wow,” Keith says and Shiro looks horrified.

“I get it, Shiro. I can’t tell her,” Keith echoes, smiling despite himself. Shiro grins back at him, easy like the old Shiro, and then drops it and leans forward.

“I am sorry,” he says, looking guilty. “I’m sorry I left you.”

He looks at Keith, and Keith takes a breath, and closes his eyes, and takes another breath. He lets the words curl inside him and uncurl again, untangling all the ugly petty knots that have ached in his chest close to choking him. He lets it salve all the little wounds of a lifetime, because you can die by papercuts if there’s enough of them, if there’s a thousand. It would be easy to leave it there, to let Shiro carry the blame of every new family and every bad Christmas, but it wouldn’t be fair. Keith wants to be fair.  

“You didn’t leave,” Keith says, “You were taken. It’s different,” and this time, it is. This time, it is different. He watches it settle something in Shiro’s eyes, and smiles again.

“Do you want to talk about him?” Shiro says, nudging Keith with his shoulder and nodding towards the healing pod. It’s been a year since Keith felt known like this.

“I ruined it,” Keith tells him. “I left first. Am I always going to do this?"

He means: _am I always going to do what was done to me?_

“You’re not the first person to screw up because you were scared, Keith,” Shiro says, his eyes very serious. “We all fall down sometimes. Have you - and I’m only asking this because it’s you I’m asking - have you tried apologising?”

“He hates me,” Keith says, resting his chin on his knees. “He definitely hates me.”  

“That’s a no, then. I’d almost forgotten how much being a teenager sucked,” Shiro hums sympathetically. They sit in silence that’s not quite uncomfortable and not quite soothing for a while, and then Shiro gets up. He puts a hand to Keith’s shoulder.

“How are we forming Voltron, if he hates you so much?”

“I don’t know,” Keith grouses. He hunches over further. “Maybe he’s keeping it under control -”

“It’s Lance,” Shiro reminds him.

Keith opens his mouth, and then closes it again.

“Think about it.”

Shiro heads out, and then turns to hover in the doorway.

“Always is a very long time, Keith,” he says. “You’re not always going to do anything.”

*

The opposite of love is apathy. This, Keith knows, is not apathy.

*

“Hey,” Keith says, trying to sound casual, trying to sound like he hasn’t been waiting outside Lance’s door for the last half hour, figuring he had to head back here sometime. “Have you been avoiding me since you woke back up?”

“Hey,” Lance says, looking tired, hands in his pockets, hands always in his pockets. If Keith closes his eyes, he can smell the crackle of the ozone in the air, can see the kitchen lights washing out half of Lance’s face out the back exit of the diner, and he can feel those same hands locked around his waist in a death-grip. “Have you only just noticed I’ve been avoiding you since I woke back up? It’s been, like, three days.”

 _We’re gonna die out here,_ Lance had howled into Keith’s hair on a hairpin turn once. _You’re gonna kill us, you’re gonna be the death of me, they’re never gonna find our bodies._

Anger, Keith is realising, is a secondary emotion.

“I’ve been scared,” Keith tells him, “For - for ages, actually. So, it’s been longer than three days. If you count that. Uh. If you want to count that.”

“Are you scared right now?” Lance asks him.

“Probably not enough,” Keith admits, “But yeah. Yeah, I really am. Can I come in?”

Lance looks at him silently, assessing, sniperscope eyes and the curl of his mouth.

“Tell me why I should,” he says finally. “You know, you’re not the only one who gets scared. I was pretty cut up over you.”

“Are we really doing this in the corridor?”

“Yeah,” Lance replies. “We are. I’d make it easy, but you don’t go for easy. So. Suck it up.”

“Why are you like this,” Keith snaps, exasperated. “Why are you _literally_ always _like this_.”

“Born this way, dropped on the head, take your pick,” Lance retorts. “We better not be having this conversation because you’ve realised I’m your last chance in space.”

“My last - are you _kidding_ me, Lance? There’s whole _galaxies_ out here.”

“You heard me.”

They’re going nowhere. They’re going nowhere. They’re always going -

“Did you ever have dreams about me dying?” Keith interrupts. “I used to.”

“What, have dreams about yourself dying? That’s weird, Keith.”

“Oh my God,” Keith hisses, “Lance, can you take anything I’m saying seriously for like _ten seconds_  -” and then stops, because he sees when Lance gets it. Lance’s face goes pale and he seems to stop breathing.

“That,” Lance says slowly, “that - I - yeah. When - so, after the funeral, right?”

“Right.”   

Lance unlocks his door without looking away from Keith.

“We’re gonna talk,” he says, sounding vaguely hysterical at the idea, “And you’re gonna talk. About your own feelings. This is something we’re going to do.”

Keith feels sick and exhilarated, both at once. He hooks his eyes on Lance’s collarbone and a hand tilts his face back up. Lance smirks.

“Quit staring. We’re doing feelings right now.”

His eyes are very still.

“I hate this already,” Keith says, but follows Lance through the door.

*

“Sometimes,” Lance tells him one night in the desert, “I look at the stars and I tell myself _you’re never going to be more than what they are_. And it makes it easier, you know? All the scary shit that you’ve gotta do each day, like take a make-up test, or talk to girls. You know.”

“Yeah,” Keith drawls, “Real scary,” and Lance thwacks his arm.

“Shut up, I’m talking right now. Doesn’t that make it easier, though? Those stars, what we see of the stars, it’s all just memories. Those stars don’t even look like this right now. We’re just seeing memories, and they’re going on and on. Those stars could have been dead thousands of years, and we wouldn’t know. And I’m never gonna be more than that, you know? Even if something happens to me out there, I’m never going to be more than memories, and after that much time, is all the bad shit going to really matter?”

He turns to look at Keith, bright-eyed, his hair falling in his eyes. Keith is eighteen years old and feels a cavity in his chest, a shape where something used to be and now there’s just a supernova.  

“Close your eyes and trust me?” Keith asks, very quietly. He feels like his ribs might break with it.

Lance looks at him for one beat, then two. And then he closes his eyes.

And something in Keith’s chest sings. Call and response. Affinity.

 


End file.
